For the Record: X2 Day – How Good is it Really?

Hello everyone, one million “likes” on FB is quite a milestone (hell, I wish FTR had 10k) for Wargaming – and one that Wargaming decided to celebrate by giving us x2 XP event for free. Sounds awesome, doesn’t it? But… how good it really is? Perhaps it is more like a… “Greek gift”? Now, I don’t want to sound ungrateful – but first thing anyone has to understand is that nothing is for free, not even this event. There is a price to pay – it will draw out crowds of tamatoes just like other infamoux “x2″ or “x5″ events and that is not a good thing. But what sort of annoys me are the conditions. In order to get this x2 bonus, you have to - win - be in top 10 of the 15 players Now, let’s say we are talking about an average player, who wants to sit down and spend 2 hours at the computer, grinding his favourite tier 9 tank to FINALLY get that tier 10. Yea, that would be me. On average, one game takes cca 8 minutes, so within those 2 hours, you can play maximum of 15 battles. In reality, it will be a bit less, unless you want to play nonstop – like with other tanks, but let’s just say you want to play that one tank (for me, it’s the Centurion 7). So let’s say 14, for the sake of argument. Out of those 14 battles, you can immediately discard one, because the bonus doesn’t apply for the first win. 13 battles then (and that’s if you count you actually win the very first battle, which you might not – so let’s say it’s 12 left). 12 battles then – now, the double XP bonus applies only to wins. Normally, let’s say you have a 50 percent winrate, but this can go wildly up and down – don’t forget it’s “x2″, where noobs can screw you up in all sorts of ways. Let’s say your short term winrate is 40 percent then (and not 20 percent or so like mine today). So, that’s 4,8, so let’s say 5 battles you won in two hours, not counting the first win. BUT! Out of those 5 you have to be in top two thirds of the team. Normally, you could say “no big deal”, right? But… count cases where you get killed straight away, pushed by a noob and killed even if your team wins etc. – ending up in top 2/3 of the team does not come “naturally”, it’s not “easy” to achieve, it actually takes some effort, so let’s say you managed that in 3 out of those 5 battles. So, in result, out of 14 battles you played in 2 hours, only 3 battles will award you with that XP increase. Based on your performance, the results may vary wildly and it’s not easy to say, how much more XP you actually get, but counting the same amount of XP you get from all battles on average… Let’s say then you got 1000 XP for each battle (in real life, it’s much less, but we are talking examples and averages). 14 battles times 1000 – 14k, in case of the event it’s +3k (3 doubles), so 17k. Roughly 20 percent more XP overall. So… the real question is, does that 20 percent extra XP outweigh the frustration from an “x2″ weekend? I am not so sure. Personally, I would prefer the “top 10″ condition to disappear. Of course, some might say “but that will encourage botting” – easy enough, replace it with “gain at least 150XP” requirement, that should stop AFKers and at least the more idiotic bots from getting anything (advanced bots are fully capable of ending in top 2/3 anyway).